


It makes it all go down easier

by sharlatanka



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, The world needs some more Eskel and Lambert time, Young Witchers (The Witcher)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-14 21:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28802235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharlatanka/pseuds/sharlatanka
Summary: Then the corners of Geralt’s lips turned up slightly.“Yeah,” he poured himself more and spoke after another gulp, “The mages poke your eyes with their long fingernails. Then they pull them out.”Eskel leaned in over the table and whispered. Lambert could smell the heat of the vodka in his breath. “They got a cat nearby— what you can’t see, since your eyes are gone, but you can hear it— and they pull it’s eyes out, too. You get the cat eyes,” he pulled his eyes wide with his fingers; they were so reflective as to nearly be illuminated in the dark.“And the cat gets your eyes!” Geralt slapped the table loudly, rattling the glasses and making Lambert jump in his seat.“Fuck you guys!” His voice cracked from the fear and surprise, and the two of them laughed.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33





	It makes it all go down easier

**Author's Note:**

> This follows after my other short Eskel and Lambert fic, "Escape for the Night." It's rater inconsequential, but I make a reference to it in the beginning.

Lambert woke up, shivering, to an empty room, and an open door. 

“ _ Bastards.”  _ He muttered under his breath. Frost was settling on Kaer Morhen, and his two older,  _ ostensibly smarter _ roommates were gone, leaving the drafty air from the hallway in their place. He could have gotten up, closed the door, and gotten back in bed, but it wouldn’t get any warmer. There were no blankets, as they’d all been removed to be boiled. One of the new arrivals, a sorrowful three year old, had brought lice with him as part of the law of surprise— one more gift his family had, but did not expect. The bugs had spread fast through the keep. Lambert scratched at his freshly shorn head. He knew that spite would warm him more than a matted blanket ever would. 

He jumped down from his top bunk and began to roam the hallways, savoring the satisfying and purposeful slap of his heels on the floors as a harbinger of his arrival. Geralt and Eskel weren’t difficult to find. They were two of the few boys that had survived their trials; even at night when most were asleep, the keep was quieter in the months after a trial. More rooms were empty. More graves were full. He found the two of them sitting together over the rickety table in the kitchen. They were talking and sharing a bottle of something. Having grown up around a bottle, Lambert thought the thirteen year olds pretending to easily swallow the burning poison in front of one another looked especially juvenile. 

Lambert walked in and immediately began the accosting. “Which one of you idiot fuckers left the door open on your way out?” He was still learning the art of stringing several swear words together into the most ear-pleasing insult. 

“Try ‘ _ fucking idiots’.”  _ Geralt pointed out, index finger cast patronizingly at the younger boy with the other fingers curled around the small glass. There was a thick line of liquid at its bottom; he wasn’t able to down the whole thing in one go. Eskel’s thick laughter followed. 

“Shut the fuck up, dicknose.” Lambert climbed into a third chair next to them. “Don’t know what you have to laugh about, seeing as how your big shaved head looks like a pumpkin someone dropped on the ground.” It had been a month since the damage done by the nearby villagers to Eskel’s face had healed. It was clear that his nose was never going to be straight again, and Lambert could have sworn his skull came out of it all a much different shape. 

Eskel scowled, but in his eyes there was an emotional retreat. It pleased Lambert, and he imagined his own eyes, still grey, not yet pulled out and replaced by cat eyes (as was the word among the younger adepts), were sharp as steel. 

“What are you guys doing in here?” 

Eskel poured another round into both glasses and then raised his own. “We’re mourning and toasting to the end of Geralt’s red hair.” Geralt didn’t say anything. He only sipped at his glass and rubbed the white stubble on his head. White forever, now. 

“What are  _ you _ doing in here?” Geralt asked him. 

“You left the bedroom door open and let it get cold.”

Geralt shrugged. “It was already cold in there, anyway. Better to just stay awake than try to sleep in that.” 

“Well I  _ was.” _

“Tough shit.” Eskel muttered. 

Geralt pushed the bottle towards Lambert. The liquid inside the cloudy green glass rocked over the rough wood of the table like menacing brackish water, all too familiar. “Warm up, then. That’s what we’re doing.” He took another strained, inexperienced sip that should have been a gulp. 

Lambert looked at them through the glass for a moment before lightly pushing it away. “My mama said vodka burns a hole in your heart.” 

“Who cares what your ma told you.” Eskel spat. It sounded more harsh with the sting of the vodka in his mouth. 

“You will when she comes here. She’ll come back for me, and I’ll tell her not to take either of you with us.” 

Eskel snorted. Lambert knew by that point it was out of bitterness and jealousy. His mother must have sold him like livestock. Funny, he was beginning to look like a bull, too. Lambert’s father always said all hill people had babies like rabbits. He concocted the fantasy to make himself feel better, that he wasn’t given away in much the same manner. 

“No use making children again out of Witchers.” Geralt mumbled. The spirit was already beginning to affect his spindly frame. “So don’t worry about us.” 

“She better get here quick,” Eskel added. “You only got a few months left, right?”

Lambert swallowed. Right. A few months until his own trials. He spun the bottle slowly on the table between his fingers. 

“...What’s it like?” He finally wondered aloud. “Do the mages really pull your eyeballs out and replace them with cat eyes?” 

He watched Geralt and Eskel face each other with their cat eyes, for a moment looking rather empty, as though they were searching for something in the eyes of the other that was no longer there. Sorrow? Pity? Anger? Lambert knew to a certain extent what it was like. He heard the echoes of the screams that traveled down from the tower. He saw the bruises that cuffed their arms and legs. He watched them stare blankly at the hanging body of a boy who survived the trials but couldn’t bear to live in its aftermath, as if they were already dead, too. 

Then the corners of Geralt’s lips turned up slightly. 

“Yeah,” he poured himself more and spoke after another gulp, “The mages poke your eyes with their long fingernails. Then they pull them out.”

Eskel leaned in over the table and whispered. Lambert could smell the heat of the vodka in his breath. “They got a cat nearby— what you can’t see, since your eyes are gone, but you can hear it— and they pull it’s eyes out, too. You get the cat eyes,” he pulled his eyes wide with his fingers; they were so reflective as to nearly be illuminated in the dark. 

“And the cat gets  _ your  _ eyes!” Geralt slapped the table loudly, rattling the glasses and making Lambert jump in his seat. 

“ _ Fuck you guys!”  _ His voice cracked from the fear and surprise, and the two of them laughed. 

“If you piss your trousers from a joke, you ain’t gonna survive the real thing.” Eskel blubbered, sinking back into his seat and downing the rest of his glass. “But then again… your  _ ma is coming.”  _

Geralt poured another round but planted his glass in front of Lambert. “Better get used to the taste. They put it in all the potions they force feed you then. And spirit is a main component of every other potion that keeps you alive on the path.” They were in alchemical courses forbidden to boys who hadn’t passed the trials. Lambert wanted to be a part of them so badly, but perhaps, now a bit less. 

“That’s a lie, too.”

Eskel shook his head groggily. “We’re tellin’ you the truth. It’s even the pleasant part. It’s what makes the rest of it go down easier.”

“That’s why we’re getting used to it, now. And you should too.” Geralt raised his glass. Lambert understood that he wouldn’t lower it until he raised his own. 

So he did, arm seeming to act of its own accord. What did it mean, that he was going to drink it? That it was inevitable that he would end up just like his father, right down to his ammoniated, alcoholic smell? That he was implicitly admitting to himself that his mother would never be coming to take him away? That the two imbeciles in front of him were the closest thing he had to family, and that he wanted to fit in? 

Lambert was young, but he wasn’t meek. Every once in a while, he wanted to remind them of that. He looked them both pointedly in the eyes and threw back the entire glass the way he’d always seen his father do. He slammed the glass back down on the table in his little, clenched fist, and sucked the taste out of his teeth. Before he could say anything, however, his gut and throat rebelled against his own hubris. He ducked under the table and vomited it all back up, along with whatever gray stew and dry bread they’d been fed that day onto the floor.

When the sound of his own retching stopped filling his ears, he heard Eskel and Geralt cursing loudly and scrambling up from their chairs. Lambert didn’t even wait to understand what they were saying. He glanced wildly from each of them to the mess he’d made while wiping his mouth and nose with his sleeve. Then, he bolted out the door. 

* * *

He didn’t go back to their bunks that night, but went to his regular hiding place in the low colonnades on the sides of the courtyard where the practice weapons and combat dummies were stored. He burrowed himself in between the racks of swords and pulled at the grass feverishly until the emotional turmoil and the turmoil in his gut died down. It was just as cold (troublingly, not moreso), but at least he was alone. Until he wasn’t. 

A tall, dark figure dipped its head to fit under an arch of the colonnade close to him. “Whatcha doing down here, on your own?” It said. It blinked at him, and Lambert saw the flash of its misshapen yellow irises.

“Leave me alone, Eskel.” 

He just grunted in response and lowered himself clumsily to the ground next to the racks of swords. In doing so he had effectively laid siege to Lambert’s dull sword fortress. He wouldn’t be able to refuse to listen to whatever Eskel was about to say if he tried. He smelled heavily of vodka, but Lambert sensed none of the angry atmosphere that always had accompanied the smell on his father. In the dark, Eskel and his beast eyes finding a comfortable way to sit in the storage area reminded him more of a bear. “Still feeling bad?”

“Still feeling  _ ugly _ ? Fuck off, Eskel.”

“I made Geralt clean up your sick.” He mumbled nonchalantly. “He shouldn’ta made you drink that.” 

Lambert stuck his head out of the swords for one moment in order to gripe. The noise of the metal knocking together made Eskel jump and hiccup. “Geralt can’t  _ make  _ me do anything. Nobody can.”

Eskel blinked. “Well, fine. If that’s what you chose to do, then you sure did make a fool of yourself. Is that what you’d prefer to hear?” Lambert didn’t say anything. The swords knocked together again like curtains closing between them. “Anway. I just wanted to tell you that you don’t have to worry about cleaning it, or taking a beating for it in the morning.”

Lambert chewed on his lip for a moment before deciding to engage in the conversation again. No doubt unless he kept talking, Eskel would fall asleep. And with the way Eskel slept, Lambert would be trapped in the colonnade forever. “...Why would you do that for me?”

“Because me and Geralt are responsible for you. Or, supposed to be. You’re just a kid, anyway. Shouldn’t be drinking.”

“So are you.” He muttered back. 

He heard Eskel swallow, and didn’t see his eyes shine in the dark. He was turned away. “No, we’re not. Not anymore.” 

Eskel, Lambert, and the too-silent graveyard of a fortress shared a minute or more of grief-filled silence. Only the crickets and courtyard goats refused to take part. 

Eskel breathed heavily and broke the silence. “All that about vodka ‘burning a hole in your heart’...”

“My mother told me that.”

“You pa liked the bottle more than he liked you? I’m assuming…”

“More than he liked anybody.”

“‘m sorry. But it doesn’t make every man into a monster. I’m pretty sure Vesemir is drunk every other time we see him.”

“Not a really good example.”

“You say that as if there’s a better one. Ain’t no priests living here.”

“What is it  _ actually _ like? The trials?” Lambert finally whispered. In the slivers of moonlight that filtered through the arches, he watched Eskel reflexively wring his fingers around his wrists. 

Eskel’s voice was a bit hoarse, and thick with emotion. “I couldn’t describe it to you if I tried. It hurts. You feel yourself die; and you  _ die,  _ even when you’re trying so hard to hold on. And then you’re reborn. And at the end of it all, you don’t recognize yourself.”

Lambert was unaccustomed to this level of candor from Eskel. “You look the same to me. Maybe a little bit fatter.”

He chuckled a bit, and sniffed. “Thanks.”

“..I know my mother isn’t coming.” Lambert said aloud suddenly to himself, and Eskel. “I’m not stupid.”

“I understand…” Eskel sighed and leaned his head back on the pleasantly cool stone. “We all have our fantasies. Geralt wants to be some knight that everyone knows, and everyone loves.”

Lambert snorted. “And what about you?”

“Picture this,” He slurred, and stretched out his hands as if he was arranging a scene in front of him. “I’m in my first year on the Path. I meet a lady monster. And she’s just… she’s beautiful. And she says, ‘Eskel’--  _ she knows my name _ \-- ‘Eskel,’ she says… ‘Because you spared my life, I’ve fallen in love with you. You can quit being a witcher and we can live together forever. And we’ll be naked all the time.’ And get this: she’s got two, maybe  _ three _ tits.”

“What kind of monster has three tits?”

“I said  _ maybe.  _ I don’t know.” He shrugged. “A bruxa? I’m not done reading the bestiary. Sorry your fantasy is as boring as wanting to live with your  _ ma. _ ”

Lambert laughed quietly in spite of himself. 

“And you know, kid? You’ll live through the trials and you’ll come out a new person, just like me and Geralt. No more ma, no more pa. A new life-- sure we’ll all be doing this witcher shit until we die, but you can come up with a much better fantasy life by then, for sure.” 

“A new life, huh?”

“No mother, no father. But brothers?”

Eskel smiled in the dark. “Sure, when you live through the trial, we’ll officially be brothers. And then we’ll have a real drink.” In earnest. In grief, in celebration. But never in anger, never like his father. “I promise. For better or for worse, it’ll make the rest of it all go down easier.”


End file.
